Summary translation

Stakeholders in politics, science and economics had called for systematically retrievable, examined data about the organic market. In a project data base all structural data available about the entire and the organic agriculture in Europe starting from the year 2000 was compiled and connected in a way to make it possible to retrieve a consistent record set per country and year. Additionally, competing data is clearly presented in a source comparison enabling the user to estimate data accuracy. Besides, aggregated turnover data for Germany is available. The data base was built up from the individual sources according to the method Multiple Data Integration developed by the company fleXinfo. Systematic coordinates and key figures allow a flexible selection, structuring and a summary for the user. All data can be downloaded from the project-owned website www.zmp.de/biodaten. Thus, for the first time a central data base exists, allowing all interested parties to investigate their respective questions concerning data on the countries of the EU-25 and to receive examined results that correspond to the latest state of information available at present. The three methods for the collection of the structural data on German organic agriculture (by Federal Statistical Office, BLE and ZMP) were compared and analysed on possible sources of error. Finally, different data on the turnover of specialist shops in the health food and drink sector were methodically examined and verified on the basis of different samples. A uniform methodology was agreed on, which can serve as bench mark for the German health food and drink sector in future.